Fun with (some of) the cousins

My sister is here with her lovely family and we're having so much fun with them. Here are some photos....

 

Cupcakes of awesomeness

I'm worried I'll forget how to make these little beauties if I don't write  the recipe down now! 

Adapted from this great food blog. 

• 1 1/2 cups (170g) whole almonds (or almond meal)
• 250g caster sugar
• 3/4 cup (70g) desiccated coconut
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 2tbsp ground chia seeds
• 4 eggs
• approx 50mL of milk (dairy free if you'd prefer)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 150g butter (or nuttelex if making dairy free), melted + 50g rice bran oil
• Frozen raspberries to put on top (1/2 to 1 cup)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. 

Put almonds in blender / food processor and grind until fine. Add eggs, oil / butter mix first, then other ingredients except raspberries. If using a Blendtec blender, pulse a few times then run "batters and sauces" cycle. If using a food processor, process until it makes a smooth batter. 

Pour into lined muffin tin and bake approx 25 mins. 

My mix made 16 normal sizepd cucakes and 12 mini cupcakes. 

Recipe round up

Thought I should post some of my favourite recipe links (all gluten free of course), to make sure I'll be able to find them again when I need them...

These protein balls are delicious. These felafels are cheap, easy and very tasty (and pretty much allergy free). I make these brownies every week to take to church and I don't think I've ever brought any home again! This stir fry is terrific - we're not tofu fans so I usually make it without - works really well with a packet of frozen stir fry veges for a quick lunch.

That'll do for now :)

New

Some good friends of ours have just had a most spectacularly gorgeous baby girl. She is seven days old today and I was very fortunate to spend the morning taking photos of her. Here are some of my favourite shots.

(she very obligingly modelled some hats for me!)

It is so lovely to finally meet this precious little person. Welcome to the outside world little R!

29 Feb

This afternoon was quite alot of fun. Although if you're 2 years old there is always something to cry about!

This was captured by Jeremy - maybe next time it's Feb 29 he'll have another crack at using the camera!

Some of my favourites...

Here are a few of my favourite photos from my ailing photo project (from Feb anyway). The gorgeous baby belongs to a friend - isn't he lovely?

Glowing

Well I'm up to a grand total of 21 photos out of 300 for my photo project... I think I need to seriously reconsider the number of photos I'm aiming for! Tonight the kids were in bed and I realised I hadn't taken a photo today, as I'd intended so I gave them each a glowstick and got some fun photos! It's now over an hour later and they aren't asleep yet... might be a one off activity I think!

Girl with glowstick.....

Boy with glowstick... these 2 photos say such a lot about the personalities of my 2 older kids!

Skinnamarink

My cute chubby, dainty looking daughter has a voice like a foghorn and a personality to match. She loves to sing all sorts of songs but one of her favourites is "Skinnamarink", esp since we've been watching ALOT of Sharon Lois and Bram this holidays. Enjoy :)

Family

I have a very cute,

cheeky

and funny nephew.

And we are absolutely loving spending time with him and his mum and dad :)

Xander is 5!!

Our dear boy is a whopping 5 years old!

He's as crazy as ever :)

He loved his Octonauts cake....

... and his Lego man cake!

I've never really got into the whole fancy cake thing (mainly because I never seem to have time - my own fault really for having ALL my children very close to Xmas!) but this year I thought I should get my act together, at least for the older 2 kids!

Five things I love about Xander:

* his great enthusiasm for music and books

* the way his voice gets higher... and higher ... and higher the more excited he gets

* his concern for people who are sad or hurt

* the way he thinks his "amazing" physical feats are actually amazing

* his very crazy and funny sense of humour

Happy birthday big 5 year old boy - we love you!

300 photos in 366 days ... can I do it?

I've set myself the challenge of taking at least one photo (and hopefully uploading it onto some kind of electronic device) 300 days of this year. I know I can't manage a photo every single day, but I think this might be doable. I'm hoping to stretch myself a bit and learn more about photography by giving myself a project to do.

Here are some I took today...

The enormous excitement of the garbage truck's arrival.

I just love how all of our kids adore books. Xander in particular will drop whatever he is doing and run to look at or read whatever book is going.

Toddler feet are just so cute!

It's not quite her birthday, but we had a family party tonight to celebrate :)

Catching up...

I've been meaning to write some kind of "year in review" sort of post in an attempt to round off 2011 and move forward into 2012 (and start clearing my backlog of photos) but I'm realising I don't have time.

So, in a nutshell, 2011 was hideous sucky and awful and I'm hoping and praying that 2012 is going to be a huge improvement on last year.

Year in review over, on with the photos.

More family fun

This afternoon we went to Sandgate with my brother and sister in law and 2 of my cousins and their respective (and highly respected!) spouses. We had 3 toddlers and 3 big kids between us and the kids had lots of fun...

... most of the time!

Miri and her little cousin had a great time "scootering"!

We even managed to get all the kids sitting still(ish) for a minute or two - quite an achievement!

I think this is the first photo of us all together since June - thanks Alex :)

Christmas Day

We had a happy Christmas morning... got our annual "kids in front of the tree" photo then opened presents and rushed off to church.

Back home to assemble some toys and grab some food before we went to Lynn's for lunch.

Miri took some time out to look through our family photo book from 2011. She loves seeing pictures of her little cousins.

Playing Angry Birds is much more fun when your own Angry Birds are helping!

Christmas is alot of fun when you have a crazy playmate. The boys have been having a terrific time together.

And lunch was delicious!

There's nothing like a special Christmas Octonauts episode to make the day complete.

We all enjoyed the swimming pool....

... even Jeremy, who kept being shot into the pool by boys with water pistols!

The new car racing track was a huge hit with both of the boys.

Miri didn't seem so keen though!

Lynn, Jeremy and Phil enjoyed looking through and album of old photos that Phillipa had put together, before we took our incredibly overtired and overwrought children home for bed (no photo due to overtired and overwrought condition of children!).

We had a lovely day - hope you did too :)

Happy Christmas!

Jeremy's brother and his family have arrived in Bris for Christmas. We had a really fun day with them today at J's mum's place.

I'm mainly posting this photo to show how very similar Jeremy's and Jarvis' TV faces are - funny!

Last but not least, Nutcracker man says "have a happy Christmas or else"!

Trains!

Yesterday we went on the train ... to the santa train! Could a day begin in a better way? I think not!

After Alex, Katherine and Sam had to leave we wandered around for awhile and then went and looked at the Myer Christmas windows which seem to get more average every year. The kids enjoyed them though!